My Beloved

She’s all in the here of now.
Would you live in her past?
Leaving stage or ballroom,
doling autographed anecdotes,
swirling automythology
around her like a furtive cloak,
quick lest it be seen as torn
a cripplement attracting pity,
a darker celebrity, another fame.
She keeps it at a dreadful distance,
has detached it from her shroud
and rearview mirror:
things are not as they appear.
She has no sense of time, direction or distance,
will not acknowledge the up or down of her polarity.
She smiles too much, is happy too always.
The water in her well cannot quench thirst.
The sand of her hourglass has filled it in.
Pain, arthritis of the spine of life,
has cast the mask she lives behind.
Her footprints go in one direction,
the wake she leaves behind,
her only followers in the end.